(Adds quotes, background) TEHRAN, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Iran, accused by Israel of supplying arms to Hamas, said on Wednesday resistance groups like those in Gaza had the right to have weapons to fight "colonialists". Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki did not say the Islamic Republic itself would offer military support but said it was natural Palestinians would defend themselves and their land. He said Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were war criminals who should be prosecuted. Turning to internal Palestinian divisions, Mottaki said President Mahmoud Abbas' "time is up" and new elections should be held. "A government or a people who would like to defend themselves, it is very natural they will do their utmost to get weapons from whatever place possible," Mottaki said in a speech in Tehran in which he discussed Israel's offensive against Gaza. Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Palestinian Authority in 2007. Abbas, who still controls the West Bank, is seen as weak and ineffectual by leaders of some Arab countries like Syria, an ally of Iran. Israel accuses Iran of providing weapons to Hamas. Tehran says it provides financial, humanitarian and moral support. Iran has condemned Israel's 22-day offensive in the coastal Palestinian territory, which was launched on Dec. 27 with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks. WESTERN "SILENCE" Israel said it completed a troop withdrawal from the Hamas-ruled Gaza on Wednesday, three days after Israel and the Palestinian militant group declared separate ceasefires. Olmert has declared the mission accomplished, noting diplomatic efforts by the United States, Egypt and European nations to prevent Hamas rearming. Israel has vowed to respond to any renewed flow of arms to Gaza. In an apparent reference to U.S. backing for Israel, which Iran does not recognise and calls the "Zionist regime", Mottaki said in the speech broadcast and translated by Iran's Press TV: "During this most recent savage attack against Gaza, you tendered 300 tonnes of bombs for the Zionist regime, and now you have the audacity to come out and say that the resistance should not have any weapons." Iran has criticised some Arab states and the West for not doing enough to stop Israel's attacks on Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. The Foreign Ministry summoned a senior diplomat of the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, to protest against the EU's "indifference" and "silence" over the Gaza conflict, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday. Mottaki said Israel's goals in Gaza had been to "wipe away the resistance and also to destroy the defensive capability of the resistance," in a clear to reference to Hamas, but that it had failed. "Resistance struggles around the world, those who struggle against colonialists, it is their right ... to stand up to attacks by the enemy," he said. "And to do that it is their natural right to have access to weapons." (Reporting by Edmund Blair, Fredrik Dahl and Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Israeli soldiers sit together at a military staging area in Kibbutz Alumim, outside the Gaza Strip January 20, 2009. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, voicing shock and anger at the "heartbreaking" devastation, ...
